Justice Isn’t Boring

I'd heard about this Boring case a couple of years ago, and it finally has reached a verdict. In essence, Google's Street View crew accidentally drove up and filmed a private road, and the owners had nothing better to do than sue. I'm picturing some legal adviser drooling over Google's coffers and thinking they had an angle to get something substantial in the form of a settlement. But the case was pretty weak, with several judges simply stripping off charges, until they were left with second degree trespass. But they won! They beat Google! As Geek.com puts it: Boring couple win $1 compensation for Street View trespassing.

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Books, books and more books

I love libraries. More to the point, I love books. My wife also loves books, though now prefers her phone app to read when she gets the chance. I do read texts occasionally on my phone, and used to on my Palm, and I reluctantly read on/offline docs, but I prefer tradition. There are many reasons for going to libraries. I rarely use them for research anymore. I only go for a specific book maybe 20% of the time. I delight in taking in the experience and seeing where it leads me. I might have an objective in mind, but there are so many opportunities awaiting me, it’s hard to choose just one, or two, or several! My own library is not dissimilar from a public or university library in that respect, save perhaps its scale. That and it also serves as a music room (drum set, guitars, keyboard...) and an occasional media room. We have more than 5,300 books, though about 1,000 of them are for very young children (and mostly packed away now) and another 500 for young adults – combination homeschooling and love of books. I was putting books away the other night and looking for some references on homeschooling for a couple of pieces I am writing and went on a mini-adventure (every re-shelving trip up to my library results in armfuls coming back down with me)…. ...I rediscovered Masters of Deception, compiled by Al Seckel, is a wondrous collection of works of optical illusion by such well-known artists as Escher, Dali, and Arcimboldo, but also including Shigeo Fukuda’s incredible sculptures, and Rob Gonsalves’ realistic paintings. Scott Kim (whose work I first saw in Omni magazine in 1979) and his ambigrams, Ken Knowlton, Vik Muniz, Istvan Orosz, John Pugh, and Dick Termes are also among the 20 artists featured in this visual treat. The foreword was written by Douglas Hofstadter, which led me to… …Gödel, Escher, Bach, from which I first gained consciousness of the math in music, and of the music in math (math was something you do, not appreciate, even though I was quite good at “doing” it.) It’s been more than 25 years since I first discovered Hofstadter’s gem, and it occurred to me that I don’t recall finishing it…so that goes on the list; maybe sooner than later. Ooh! There’s John Allen Paulos, and Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences – a fantastic book of concepts, although at times disjointed like many of his works (A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up, and more – all most excellent, if a little scattered). And Friedman's "The World is Flat"... Hmm, Mark Tiedemann wrote a note on Heinlein recently (Robert A. Heinlein In Perspective)...but I only have six Heinlein books, and I promised myself I'd read Asimov's entire Foundation series from I, Robot to Foundation and Earth before I re-tried Heinlein. And I really do love Chalker, Farmer, Clarke, ... ... and Jared Diamond, and Richard Dawkins, and Martin Gardner, and Stephen Hawking,... ...Michael Shermer, Bart Ehrmann, Uncle Cecil, Gary Larson... No matter whether you get your education from electronic or print means, aural or visual, don't ever stop.

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AM radio shows as broken windows

In an 1982 article, James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling announced their "broken windows" theory of crime:

Broken windows theory is a criminological theory of the normsetting and signalling effects of urban disorder and vandalism on additional crime and anti-social behavior. The theory states that monitoring and maintaining urban environments in a well-ordered condition may prevent further vandalism as well as an escalation into more serious crime.

Here's more from Wikipedia:

Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.

Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars.

[More . . . ]

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Bullying

I've been hesitant to write about this, because the tendency to indulge self pity creeps in around the edges. I'm hesitant because for me this is personal. But in the past year we've seen a rise in attention being paid to a great human tradition---bullying. A gay youth outed by his peers committed suicide. Other gays under a microscope all over the country have found themselves driven to the edge. National "movements" to deal with this problem have sprung up like mushrooms after a spring rain. The last time we witnessed this level of discussion about bullying was after a couple of disaffected youths murdered several of their peers at their high school and then took their own lives, leaving behind ample testaments that what had driven them to do this had been years of bullying. A recent episode of Glee dealt with the subject, the lone out gay boy in the school having come under the daily assault by an oversized pituitary case who, for no apparent reason, had decided to make life hell for the outsider. I suppose it was this episode that prompted me to write about this. Because it indulged some pop psychology, which I stress is not baseless, to explain the bully's behavior---he, too, was a closeted gay who hated himself for it. The idea being that we hate that which we are which we cannot accept in ourselves. [More . . . ]

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Funeral Misbehavior

I don't follow gossip columns, or even broadcast news. But I do read a few blogs. Yesterday FriendlyAtheist posted Tony Danza’s Funeral Outburst Makes Sense. I don't particularly care about the actor or the author involved. But apparently he has gotten some negative press for an action that I wish I'd had the cojones to do a couple of times. He cut off a a cleric who was in full stride in a fire and brimstone recruiting speech at the funeral of a friend, to redirect focus to the friend. Personally, I think the cleric was misbehaving, not the friend. And I wish more people would stand up at funerals and demand that the subject be of the life departed, not of the faith of the orator. Better yet, make sure the minister knows beforehand that bald propagandizing will not be tolerated. If the deceased had been a pious person, then discussing the faith and piety of the departed meets with my approval. But using the occasion simply as a recruiting drive is too common of an occurrence. I've been to a few funerals where the cleric/priest/minister had nothing particular to contribute about the guest of honor, but went on and on about how doomed the rest of us were unless we took his preferred sacrament. He simply knew a captive audience and marketing opportunity when he had one. Very dissatisfying to those of us who knew the decedent. I have also been to good memorials, where the focus was on the life as lived. My two favorite memorial services ended with a participatory kazoo performance, or recessional music by Groucho Marx. They were fully celebrations of the life departed, not dire warnings to the audience. Unless as a cautionary example to enjoy life while you can. Here is an example of an appropriate farewell, although NSFW:

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